September 9, 2022
Hello, BFFs!
We’re back for Round #3 of our Christmas in September, where we’re releasing a whole bunch of new features that have been piling up on our desks. Cleaning house! Hmm, could we make Fall Cleaning a thing? Better take a note and put it on my desk for later… I’m sure none of you authors can relate to the whole piled-desk thing.
Moving on. So… we announced custom ebook samples on Tuesday and then personalized watermarks on Wednesday.
Did you know that every BookFunnel reader has their own library of books? They do! This is not today’s announcement. For years now, BookFunnel has kept a library for every reader with all of the books they’ve received from their favorite authors. Whether it was a reader magnet, or an ARC, or a book they purchased directly from you, they’re all there.
Like a lot of our features, we built libraries based on emails from readers. See, humans readers lose things all the time. Files, links, emails, phones, tablets. And, when they would lose a phone (for one reason or another… mostly toilets), they could lose some of their beloved books! Well, that simply will not do.
So we, being the reader lovers we are, decided it was on us to solve the problem. We added reader libraries so that your readers would never lose your beautiful words again. It’s just another foundational feature we’ve built (like our cloud reader) that makes other fabulous ideas possible.
Readers love their libraries! They’ve come to expect it from the likes of Amazon or Kobo, where everything they receive is their’s forever(ish). Readers can access their full BookFunnel library from any device using only a browser or our amazing app (more on that later).
Quit Stalling
Which brings us to today’s feature. It started as an admin tool that we occasionally used when an author had a specific need. Word spread, though, and we decided it was finally time to polish it up so that more authors could access it without having to know someone who knew someone.
Most of the authors who needed this were doing things like Kickstarters and Patreon fulfillment. Turns out, indie authors (and the occasional trad-pub) are killing it over there on Kickstarter. And, in a huge outpouring of love for readers, they’re offering up all kinds of goodies at their various reward levels.
We’ve even had a few authors who offered up ebooks (or audiobooks) of an entire series at a higher reward level. They have twenty ebooks to deliver to hundreds of people! Which is a bit of a logistical problem, because the tools don’t really exist to do that effectively.
Until today.
Announcing Bulk Delivery
What is bulk delivery? It’s just what it says on the tin.
You need to deliver one ebook to a whole lot of readers? Bulk delivery is your answer. Need to deliver an ebook and an audiobook to a plethora of readers? Bulk delivery. Need to deliver an embarrassment of ebooks to just a few readers, or even thousands of readers? Yup, bulk delivery.
Bulk delivery is fast (almost instantaneous), and it can handle any number of digital downloads and any number of readers. But, what does bulk delivery do? How does it work? Well, that’s where that reader library we mentioned comes in.
You select the books (any number of them) to deliver (ebooks, audiobooks, PDFs, short audio, whatever). You paste a list of reader email addresses. And… deliver.
BookFunnel takes all of those books, mashes them together with all of those readers, and we drop everything right into their reader library. Readers can then head over to their BookFunnel library in a browser or in our app and grab their bounty. If they’re already logged in (and hundreds of thousands of them are), it just appears there. Like magic.
Kickstarter Rewards
This is exactly what Kickstarter authors needed, so we built it. When you’re working with readers on an existing platform, the last thing you want is for them to have to wait for some email to arrive from BookFunnel to get their rewards. You want to post an update to Kickstarter and just tell them, “Your books have been delivered! They’re all in your BookFunnel Library.”
Now, with a single link, you can send readers everything they were promised. No waiting. If they already have our app, their books are already there. If not, they can jump on over to:
And, everything will be waiting for them. It’s also great for…
Patreon Fulfillment
BookFunnel has had a direct integration with Patreon for years, and you can use that to create a restricted download page just for your patrons. But, wouldn’t it be easier sometimes to just post an update on Patreon and tell everyone their books are already waiting for them? Trust me, it would.
Patreon-restricted pages are great because BookFunnel will verify that the reader is a patron of the right level before letting them download their book, but if a reader misses the announcement, or is a few months late to the party, they could miss out on something they were promised as a patron. And, that’s never a good experience for your biggest fans.
That’s where bulk delivery comes in. Once you bulk-deliver that ebook or audiobook to all of your Gold-level (or whoever) patrons, it’s forever in their library. They never have to miss a reward. BookFunnel will keep it safe for them.
And Much More
We’ve seen authors doing massive giveaways to their super readers, running contests on other platforms, all kinds of ways that you can end up with a big list of readers who were promised a digital goodie. And, now, with bulk delivery, you can send them without the hassle and control all of the communication with your readers. Don’t let the emails come from BookFunnel, let them come from you.
If you can imagine it, BookFunnel wants to help you do it. Bulk Delivery is just one more tool we built to help indie authors do things no one else can do and continue their march toward publishing dominance.
Bulk Delivery is available today, to all Mid-List+ BookFunnel authors. Learn more about bulk delivery.
The Fine Print
There is a small catch, but I promise it’s for a good reason. By default, bulk delivery is limited to 500 email addresses (that’s 500 recipients, not books). This is a feature with a potential for abuse, and we want don’t want it to be used to spam readers with content they didn’t request.
If you need to deliver to more than 500 reader email addresses, reach out! Tell us a bit about what your needs are, or point us to your Kickstarter or Patreon! We’ll make sure you can deliver all your goodies.
Wrap Up
Whew! That’s it for our first week of Christmas in September! Three amazing new features you can start using right now. Ebook samples, visible watermarking, and now, bulk delivery. It’s been a busy week.
We’re very impatient people, and waiting is the worst. Pausing our announcements for the weekend hurts us more than it hurts you, I promise.
Please join us next week for more awesomeness. We’ll be back, bright and early, with more to announce. See you next Tuesday, authors!
